So Brad figured out, on his own, that F&P might be planning their own sequel, which he expressed support for before the public announcement and without any direct confirmation from F&P.

He didn't even need to figure it out on his own; P&F told him they had plans shortly after he bought the trademark, From those same emails:

Paul Reiche on Sep 16, 2013 wrote:Fred and I are just not comfortable handing over our world to be developed by others. We’ve been discussing this for almost 20 years and we’ve always regarded a return to Star Control as our dream project – something we’d work on as soon as we found the opportunity. I know this will be a disappointment for you and your team, but Fred and I still have a Star Control plan and we’re not ready to give it up yet.

Brad has more recently tried to say that he assumed P&F would wait until Stardock was done with the franchise before putting their plans into motion, implying that it was somehow unreasonable for them to act earlier than that. But I see nothing in the email chain to suggest that he had a reasonable basis for that assumption.

And that wasn't the first baseless assumption he appears to have made. As near as I can tell, this all started when he bought the trademark under the apparent assumption that P&F would either jump at the chance to work with him, or would at least license their copyrights to him. But he didn't actually ask their opinion about it until he'd already blown $400k of his company's money on the trademark. When they turned him down, he seemed to realize that he'd bought a lemon, and tried to effectively back out of the purchase by selling it to them.

Ultimately, he asks no fewer than seven times for them to give him a license, and never really seems to get the hint that they aren't obligated to play along just because he got himself in a bind.

So Brad figured out, on his own, that F&P might be planning their own sequel, which he expressed support for before the public announcement and without any direct confirmation from F&P.

He didn't even need to figure it out on his own; P&F told him they had plans shortly after he bought the trademark, From those same emails:

Paul Reiche on Sep 16, 2013 wrote:Fred and I are just not comfortable handing over our world to be developed by others. We’ve been discussing this for almost 20 years and we’ve always regarded a return to Star Control as our dream project – something we’d work on as soon as we found the opportunity. I know this will be a disappointment for you and your team, but Fred and I still have a Star Control plan and we’re not ready to give it up yet.

Brad has more recently tried to say that he assumed P&F would wait until Stardock was done with the franchise before putting their plans into motion, implying that it was somehow unreasonable for them to act earlier than that. But I see nothing in the email chain to suggest that he had a reasonable basis for that assumption.

And that wasn't the first baseless assumption he appears to have made. As near as I can tell, this all started when he bought the trademark under the apparent assumption that P&F would either jump at the chance to work with him, or would at least license their copyrights to him. But he didn't actually ask their opinion about it until he'd already blown $400k of his company's money on the trademark. When they turned him down, he seemed to realize that he'd bought a lemon, and tried to effectively back out of the purchase by selling it to them.

Ultimately, he asks no fewer than seven times for them to give him a license, and never really seems to get the hint that they aren't obligated to play along just because he got himself in a bind.

To be fair, they also said much the same thing to Accolade when StarCon was being worked on and to fans over the years, so I understand it not initially being evident that their expression of wanting to keep the rights exclusive for their own future plans meant they would be going forward in the near future.

That said, there is indeed no reasonable basis for him to assume that Paul and Fred would delay their own plans for him, nor is there any reasonable reason why they should. Buying the trademark from Atari does not mean that Paul and Fred, having nothing to do with the purchase agreement, owe him anything. Nor should it mean that if the opportunity P&F had been hoping would come along for 25 years finally presents itself, they should delay it for... who even knows how long Brad would be satisfied with given his initially stated sequel plans.

Paul and Fred are free to work or not work with him, coordinate or not coordinate with him. Any suggestion otherwise is absurd.

I understand it not initially being evident that their expression of wanting to keep the rights exclusive for their own future plans meant they would be going forward in the near future.

Well, for generous values of "near future"; it was still another four years before P&F announced GotP. And while Stardock took exception to them announcing around the time of the beta, I suspect that if they'd waited another year to announce, SD would have been even more upset at them stepping on the game's actual release.

To those interested, there's a decision on Stardock's request for a preliminary decision for an injunction against PR and FF to block them from sending a DMCA notice to GoG and/or Valve.https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov ... .102.0.pdf
An interesting read, but in the bigger picture it does not mean anything. Especially since quite a few arguments have been striked from the dossier, see page 11, lines 15-16.

Otherwise the footnotes are somewhat interesting, especially the one on page 10....